ADDRESS 

Delivered by 

CHARLES AUSTIN BEARD, Ph. D. 




“ PUBLIC SERVICE IN 
AMERICA ” 


OSS' 


Under the auspices of the 

EDUCATIONAL DEP^T OF THE MUNICIPAL COURT 
Room 676, City Hall 

Friday, November 14th, 4 p. m. 

c, 1,^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
!^£C&IV£D 

DE:ci 41922 

DOCUMtNTS DiVicilON 










Doctor Charles Austin Beard, Director of the New York 
Bureau of Municipal Research and of the New York Training 
School for Public Service, is considered the leading authority 
on his subject in America. He is the author of “American 
Government and Politics,” and “American City Government.” 

“Public Service in America,” an illuminating address, was 
delivered Friday, November 14, 1919, in Room 676, City Hall. 




r 


In introducing Mr. Charles Austin Beard, Ph. D., Hon¬ 
orable Charles L. Brown, President Judge of the Municipal 
Court, said: 

This is the second lecture in the course of instructing the 
people in a better understanding of the public social service. 
We had a very enlightening address recently from Colonel 
Folks, who had a long experience with the sufferings resulting 
from the war in Europe. His remarks to us I think opened 
our eyes to the great necessity of helping the people in Europe 
as much as possible. 

To-day we are very fortunate in having a man to talk for 
us who has had wide experience, who has been connected with 
the Columbia University, who has made a study of this sub¬ 
ject-matter, who is an author on the subject, whose books will 
profit anybody who will read them with a desire to know. It 
gives me a great deal of pleasure to present to you to-day 
Dr. Charles A. Beard, who is the Director of the New York 
Training School for Social Service and the Director of the 
New York Bureau of Municipal Research, which is, I believe, 
the parent body of our Bureau here, which has done a great 
work for us. 


ADDRESS 


Judge Brown and Ladies and Gentlemen: 

The honor of an invitation from Judge Brown to take 
part in the course for public officers arranged under the aus¬ 
pices of the Municipal Court of Philadelphia is one which any 
student of government in America may well covet. On that 
score I may at once register my gratification. There is an¬ 
other reason, perhaps less a matter of sentiment, why I am 
grateful for the opportunity to take part in this educational 
program. As a citizen and more than casual observer of the 
drift of things administrative, I see in courses of this charac¬ 
ter a new and promising sign for the advancement of public 
service to a higher plane of performance. This course is one 
of an increasing number springing up here and there in our 
great cities. I am going from Philadelphia to-night to Wash¬ 
ington, where a committee of the Federal Government is tak¬ 
ing into consideration the subject of training for the Federal 
Service and what should be done by the Federal Government 
to improve the service of that Government. Such courses as 
this are a sign that we are beginning to recognize public serv¬ 
ice as a calling worthy of the finest enthusiasm and the best 
talent that America can afford. It is also a sign that we are 
beginning to appreciate that men and women must be trained 
in this calling, or rather its several branches; that we cannot 
trust to luck and to chance information to provide the wise 
and humane service which the people have a right to expect at 
the hands of our governments—^municipal, state and local. 

We have too long delayed the founding and extension of 
courses of instruction such as I understand you are giving 
here in Philadelphia in connection with your Municipal Court. 
It is strange that with all our faith in education, and with our 
huge expenditures for educational work, we have given so 
little attention to education for the public service. It is 
strange also that while spending hundreds of millions for edu¬ 
cation, our governments have had so little faith in it that they 



8 


have been unwilling, except perhaps in purely technical mat¬ 
ters, to give to education the weight which it deserves in the 
selection and promotion of public officers. 

There are many reasons why we have been negligent in 
this matter. Like all countries, traditions cling to us long 
after the circumstances which gave rise to them have passed 
away. Our great tradition in regard to public service is best 
expressed in the language of Andrew Jackson: “The duties of l 
all public officers are, or at least admit to being made so plain 
and simple, that men of intelligence may readily qualify them¬ 
selves for their performance.” It is expressed also in the 
Constitution of the State of Indiana, which provides that no 
qualifications save an oath to support the Constitution of the 
State and of the United States shall ever be imposed upon 
those seeking admission to the practice of law. This declara¬ 
tion of principle was true enough in the main when it was 
uttered—in an age of stage coaches, tallow candles and bucket 
brigades for fire fighting. When the most important function 
of the public works department was the maintenance of the 
town pump, any citizen of ordinary intelligence could readily 
qualify for chief of the department. 

It seems hardly necessary to point out in detail the great 
revolution that has taken place in American government since 
Andrew Jackson was President of the United States. A few 
significant facts, however, will readily demonstrate how ut¬ 
terly obsolete is the old tradition. That any person of ordinary 
intelligence can fill any public office acceptably by merely exer¬ 
cising the wits with which Mother Nature has endowed him. 
Mark Twain said if any American citizen ever showed a tend¬ 
ency to doubt the existence of an overruling Providence, let 
him consider the way in which we had tried to govern our¬ 
selves for the past hundred years. 

The first striking fact in this great revolution in Ameri¬ 
can life since Andrew Jackson set the tradition for Public 
Service, is the steady increase in the number and variety of 
activities now undertaken by the Government which were 
wholly unknown in the days of Jacksonian democracy. Our 
governments now own and operate great water works, electric 
light, and, in a few instances, street railway plants. Where 
they do not own and operate, they regulate in great detail the 


rates and capitalization and the conditions of operation. Our 
governments have embarked on large programs of social bet¬ 
terment; tenement house control, minimum wages, mothers' 
pensions, industrial hygiene, preventive medicine, housing 
schemes as in Massachusetts, industrial insurance, workmen's 
compensation, and aid in home building enterprises, city zoning 
in connection with city planning, municipal markets. They 
determine the standards for buildings, private houses, tene¬ 
ments and offices; they inspect boilers, elevators, mines, fac¬ 
tories; indeed, there is not a branch of private enterprise or 
industry with which the government does not come into more 
or less direct contact. Great skyscrapers are built only after 
the approval of plans by the public authorities, shafts of mines 
are sunk thousands of feet into the earth only in accordance 
with standards as to safety and ventilation which are fixed un¬ 
der governmental authority. The houses in which we dwell, the 
offices and factories in which we work, the ships in which we 
set out to sea, are all of them under the eye of one or more 
agencies of the government. The water faucet, the milk deliv¬ 
ered at the door, the purity of the food and drugs which we 
buy, the public conveyances in which we ride are all at one 
point or another under government supervision and control. 
For us the agents of the government patrol the watersheds 
hundreds of miles in the country from which we draw our 
water supply; for us the bacteriologist bends over the test 
tube trying out the purity of the water and the milk; for us 
the chemist works at his crucible testing the quality of the 
steel that goes into our public buildings, or the composition 
of the pavement on which we walk. Indeed, wherever we 
are, or whatever we do, in our private or industrial life, we 
come directly in contact with the authority of the govern¬ 
ment. Our safety, our health, our comfort and our commerce 
depend in a measure, which few of us appreciate, upon the 
skill, efficiency and loyalty of thousands of employes in our 
municipal, state and national service. They are for the most 
part in the annals of politics and history unknown and un¬ 
sung ; the glory that comes to the military hero is seldom theirs, 
but in very truth without their labors the militar}'’ hero would 
have no country worthy of the name for which he could show 
his valor on the field of battle. 


10 


That is not all. Upon the conduct of our police depart¬ 
ment and our courts of justice, even more perhaps than any 
other branch of the government, depend the views which 
millions of aliens form as to American ideal and government. 
The average citizen does not realize how large a proportion of 
his fellow-citizens are arrested from year to year for offenses 
great and small, and brought within the jurisdiction of our 
courts. In the city of New York alone we arrest on the aver¬ 
age of 150,000 to 175,000 people a year. A very large pro¬ 
portion of these offenders have transgressed not so much the 
old-fashioned moral laws as the ordinances and rules that have 
grown up of necessity in our cities—health ordinances, build¬ 
ing ordinances, food and drug ordinances. Since a very large 
proportion of the people arrested are from the poorer sections, 
and since a very large portion of our poorer population is of 
alien origin, it follows as night the day, the courts are our 
most important agents in expounding American ideals or in 
driving into bitter enmity toward American institutions the 
tens of thousands of people who are armually caught within 
the toils of the law. The bearing of the patrolman, of court 
attendants, probation officers and judges, is of great importance 
that we can hardly overemphasize. And especially important 
in these trying times are industrial crimes. There should be 
no doubt about our determination to apply the rigors of the 
law to the criminal, wherever he may be found and under the 
guise of whatever philosophy he may preach. But it is im¬ 
portant to remember that the line is not easy to draw between 
intention to stir up violence and language which by construc¬ 
tion may stir up violence, and where our courts of justice and 
our police officers and the officers of our courts have to deal 
not merely with open acts of violence or of misconduct, or 
matters of opinion, they are treading upon delicate ground, 
ground so delicate that I fear the situation is not appreciated 
as much as it should be here in the United States. It is my 
thought that we should uphold law and order and sustain the 
Constitution, but let us not forget in enforcing the fourteenth 
amendment, safeguarding the rights of property, that we 
should not neglect the first amendment, which provides for 
liberty of press and of speech. For this country was founded 
on the grounds of opinion. My ancestors came to America 


11 


nearly three hundred years ago, not to seek material better¬ 
ment, not to find more money, but to seek freedom for their 
belief. To that great cause they dedicated their lives, and it 
is important that in coming years we should seek to make the 
development of democracy in America a peaceful development 
of calm and deliberate discussion, in which we should all be as 
willing to hear expoimded opinions with which we do not 
agree as opinions with which we do agree, and it is a very 
painful thing to listen to somebody whose views we do not 
share. 

And so in these days it is important that we should em¬ 
phasize more than in ordinary times the relation of our courts, 
and of the servants of the courts, not only to this great body 
of aliens within our gates, but also to natives within our gates, 
that in dealing with them we should observe correct, humane 
and wise relations, as well as firm. 

Happily everywhere is this being recognized. Courts, 
like institutions, are being specialized to deal with particular 
cases, each group of which involves highly technical knowl¬ 
edge, both of material circumstances and of human nature. 
During this time has been the division of our courts into 
various parts to deal with various problems. It is a sign that 
we are recognizing the importance of technical training, of 
technical experience, in dealing with the highly special prob¬ 
lems that appear not only in the civil courts but in the criminal 
courts. 

But in passing from that subject I have just indicated a 
great range of public activity in the United States. I have 
shown how our government so closely and vitally affects our 
liberties and comforts and our convenience, our safety and 
our health. 

In surveying the extent and variety of our public services, 
we see that our governments to be efficient and strong must 
command as employes men and women who are proficient in 
all of the known sciences, arts, crafts. A glance through the 
roster of employes of the city New York, for example, reveals 
this fact in a striking manner. We start with arboriculturists 
at the top of the alphabetical list and run down through ac¬ 
countants, actuaries, alienists, apothecaries, architects, audi¬ 
tors, bacteriologists, boiler makers, bricklayers, cement testers. 


12 


comptrollers, corporation counsel, demographer, detective, 
dietitian, electrician, engineer (mechanical, electrical, civil, 
etc.), finger-print expert, fireman, franchise searchers, house¬ 
keepers, linemen, mechanicians, medical examiners, obstet¬ 
ricians, pathologists, pharmacists, psychologists, real estate ex¬ 
perts, riveters, shoemakers, statisticians, surgeons, tinsmiths, 
transitmen, upholsterers, veterinarians. X-ray assistants, yeo¬ 
men, to mention only a few by the way of illustration. 

In nearly all these branches of work it is not only nec¬ 
essary to have the technical training but also a mastery of 
the peculiar problems that arise in governmental work. 

It is not only the variety of governmental enterprise that 
challenges our attention and concern, there is in addition the 
number of men and women which it takes to conduct our pub¬ 
lic service. The city of New York, for example, has approxi¬ 
mately 90,000 employes, including the teachers. This is nearly 
three times the total population of that city when George 
Washington was inaugurated President on April 30, 1789. If 
we estimate that each employe represents a family of five, we 
see that nearly a half million men and women and children 
are more or less directly involved in the public service of that 
city. A very competent engineer some three years ago esti¬ 
mated the total number of civil service employes in all gov¬ 
ernmental positions in the United States at approximately 
two million. Already our state, city and federal governments 
have in their service as many members of the American So¬ 
ciety of Civil Engineers as are engaged in private consulting 
practice, and more than are employed by either railway cor¬ 
porations or private manufacturing or contracting companies. 
If we should add to the two million or more now directly 
employed by our governments approximately three million 
more employed by our railways and utility corporations di¬ 
rectly under government supervision and control, and by prac¬ 
tice in the quasi public service, and we see how immense is the 
army of men and women in this country directly or indirectly 
connected with the work of the government, or with activities 
closely under government supervision. 

I will illustrate what I mean by citing that field of public 
utility where the government regulates the rate which a cor¬ 
poration can charge. It by that act assumes responsibility to 


13 


a considerable extent at least for the wages paid and the labor 
policy followed by that corporation, and cannot deny its re¬ 
sponsibility. So that, looking at the matter broadly, we are 
surprised to find two millions of people directly employed by 
our governments and three million more whose wages and 
conditions and hours of labor are directly affected by govern¬ 
mental action. I beg you to remember that the Adamson 
Railway Law was passed before the railways went into the 
hands of the government. 

It is not probable that the number will diminish. Indeed, 
there is every reason to believe, whether we like it or not, the 
number will increase, but even as it stands it is great enough 
to strike the imagination of even the most indifferent citizen 
who has thought that the government service need receive 
little attention and could take care of itself, relying on rule 
of thumb methods in training, selecting and promoting civil 
employes. 

There is another aspect of the subject which, though it 
need not detain us long, deserves to be considered for a 
moment. This service is expensive. The cost of government 
has been increasing rapidly. It is still increasing. There is 
every reason to believe that it will continue to increase. Not 
long ago the Bureau of Municipal Research had occasion to 
survey the finances of an important American city and as a 
result of its investigation it was compelled to point out that 
if the expenses of that municipal government continued to in¬ 
crease as they had increased during the past ten years, the 
tax rate in 1928 would be nearly 6 per cent, on the assessed 
valuation of the property for taxation. It now costs nearly 
$300,000,000 a year to conduct the government of the city of 
New York. That is nearly $250 for every family, reckoning 
five as the average. The cost of our state governments are 
mounting. If you have any doubt about the federal govern¬ 
ment, consult the income tax law. 

Here then is a great branch of human activity called the 
public service which takes an increasing amount of the total 
national income for maintenance and upon which the very 
foundations of our social order and our public welfare rest, 
and it will be borne in mind in this connection that ours is 
not a socialistic government, and that these functions have 


14 


been undertaken on practical considerations. They do not 
rest upon the theory that the state should assume the owner¬ 
ship and control of an immense amount of property and enter¬ 
prise now left in private hands. It is a condition, not a 
theory, that confronts us. Need I say more to show that 
here is a great field of human interest worthy of the deepest 
study and the most thoughtful consideration of every citizen 
concerned in the fate of American civilization? That upon 
the wisdom, the humanity, the justice, the firmness and the 
efficiency of the army of public officers in their service that 
runs along from year to year, there rest the foundations of 
this great structure? Is it too much to say that in this trying 
hour of ours, when we are confronted with great conflicts in 
the world and the whole world is in turmoil, that it is to the 
humanity, the strength, and the wisdom of our governments 
that we must look for the security of civilization in America ? 
Need I say more to convince you, if you are not already con¬ 
vinced, that the public service in all its branches is a subject 
worthy of your study and your deepest consideration? 

That is not all. It is one of the paradoxes of our age 
that at a time when this great burden is thrown upon our gov¬ 
ernments—municipal, state and national—political democracy 
is triumphant throughout western civilization. At a time when 
the mayor of a great city at the head of all important branches 
of municipal administration bears upon his shoulders burdens 
greater than those imposed upon the kings of old, we have 
put the ballot in the hands of every citizen. I think that it 
is not an extravagance to say that the Mayor of a city of a 
hundred thousand people has greater responsibility resting 
upon him than King John of Magna Charta fame, more serious 
resix)nsibilities for the health, comfort, safety and convenience 
of the people than did the king so great in history. And yet 
at this time we are entrusting the whole delicate process of 
government not only to Tom, Harry, Dick and Will, but to 
Susan, Bridget and Jane. (Laughter.) 

Even by those who often have been the most vigorous cham¬ 
pions of democracy we are told that democracy is notoriously 
inefficient, that democratic governments cannot be entrusted 
with responsibilities assumed by aristocratic governments. 
Before the war it was one of the boasts of those who defended 


15 


the German system that at least it was efficient, that railways 
and lighting plants and housing plans and the other myriad 
divisions of municipal and central government were handled 
in a more businesslike fashion in Germany than anywhere else 
in the world. It was boldly said—and there are plenty of 
books probably in America containing this thought—that while 
a German city might with safety undertake a great enterprise, 
no such experiments could be made in American cities. The 
answer was that we preferred governments of our own choos¬ 
ing, even though they may be inefficient to governments im¬ 
posed upon us even though they are conducted with mechanical 
precision. There are some things more important in the world 
than a low death rate. It is not, after all, so important that 
we should live as that we should live worthily. That issue has 
been tried out on the field of battle and is settled for the time 
being. 

In other words modern civilization has been confronted 
with two solutions of the great problem^—^how to secure a 
public service competent to discharge the public functions. 
The German answer was to commit public administration to 
men highly trained and imposed upon communities by authori¬ 
ties not subject to their control. The American answer is that 
all authorities must be subject to popular control, and America 
will now approach without fear the other part of the question 
—how to combine technical skill of the highest order with 
popular election and control. Upon the solution of that prob¬ 
lem depends the fate of democracy in the world. It is well 
for us to remember that in the economy of Providence two 
hundred years are a short time, as we look back, as I am prone 
to do, for I used to teach at college a course in general his¬ 
tory, in which I began with the Fall of Man and ended with 
the Fall of Port Arthur, and I got the habit of looking at things 
at long range. I devoted, I remember, a half an hour to the 
disposing of the early Egyptian Empire, which lasted some 
three or four thousand years. I am serious when I say that 
if we look forward as we look back, the difference between 
a wise man and a fool is that a wise man looks forward, the 
fool merely looks down. If we look forward as well as back¬ 
wards I think we will be compelled to confess that the future 
of our citizenship, the future of that great ideal for which 


16 


for more than three hundred years the people of Western 
Europe have been struggling, depends upon the solution of 
this problem of a wise, a humane and efficient public service. 

With such vision and understanding as I can command, I 
propose to throw light upon that problem—to my mind the 
central theme of human interest in western civilization. 
Frankly I think the way has been pointed out in our educa- ) 
tional system. When I say that I am not unmindful of the 
great industrial problem, and the capital problem. I say this 
is the central theme, for that problem could not be solved 
merely by conflict between the two great parties engaged in it, 
but it involves every point in the great structure which we 
call the state. If the state is incompetent for its task, both ^ 
labor and capital will be incompetent for their task. 

Now that is before us, how to train and select and pro¬ 
mote and encourage and develop a loyal and effective public 
servant throughout all the branches and in all the grades, a 
subject to which we have given very little attention. 

The teaching profession is the one branch of public service 
for which we now provide thorough and systematic training, 
and in which we offer to the youth of the land an opportunity 
to climb the ladder from the humblest position in the smallest 
rural community to the highest educational post in the greatest 
city. Here is the one profession of public service which 
young men and women can enter with full confidence that by 
careful training and systematic and loyal devotion they can 
count upon a continuous and progressive career. That teach¬ 
ers are not now amply compensated I do not deny. That, 
however, is a matter that can be and will be remedied. 

But the point that I wish to make is simply this, that that 
is the one branch of this great public service which we have 
recognized as requiring special training, and in which we have 
provided careers for the men and women who want to devote 
their lives to it. 

The problem before us in the other branches of the pub¬ 
lic service is to follow the example set in the education service. 
This implies to my mind three things—first, training for ad¬ 
mission to the service. In those cities that have civil service 
and in the federal government, credit is now given for train¬ 
ing along certain lines in educational institutions of recognized 


17 


standards. For example, in the selection of an assistant en¬ 
gineer, the federal civil service recently announced that in 
addition to credits for examination work, training and experi¬ 
ence, it would accept graduation from a technical course in a 
college or university of recognized standing in lieu of two 
years of the required experience. There is no reason at all 
why the technical branches of our civil service should not all 
adopt the principle involved in such a rule. If this were 
done, our public schools, colleges and universities could easily 
work out programs of instruction which calculate to acquaint 
young men and women as far as it can be done through formal 
classroom work, with the working requirements of the posi¬ 
tions for which they are likely to become candidates. If, 
however, it were argued that it is experience rather than 
education that counts, the answer is that our educational 
work could be adjusted to the requirements of the public serv¬ 
ice in such a way that those contemplating entering the public, 
service could secure under the direction of competent public 
officers actual laboratory, office and field experience, such as 
is required for the regular members of the staff. This is done 
in education, for our normal schools try to give to teachers, in 
addition to formal instruction, actual classroom experience. 

This is not a fanciful idea; it is being carried out in 
private enterprises in many cities. I take it for granted that 
you are familiar with the admirable plan developed by Dean 
Schneider in Cincinnati. He is actually combining classroom 
instruction with actual shop experience in engineering work. 
There is no reason why this idea should not be carried into 
the public service, by which young men and women who are 
thinking of entering into the public service might be given an 
opportunity through junior positions in the public service for 
.experience, actually arranged for them in the service by com¬ 
petent officials. There is no reason why we should not give 
them that practical contact with the actual work of public 
service which is necessary for proper performance. If we 
should do this we should have a great supply of competent 
young men and women prepared to accept junior positions in 
the public service. 

Our great corporations are doing this right along. Has it 
ever occurred to you that nearly all of our educational ad- 


18 


vances has been outside of our institutions of learning? All 
of our great schools have developed outside of our colleges 
and universities, and have only been taken into the fold, so to 
speak, after they had become established and reputable. Law¬ 
yers had to start their law schools outside as proprietary in¬ 
stitutions. Doctors started their different schools, then busi¬ 
ness schools and then engineering schools and so on. Then, 
after these demonstrations had been made, universities have 
taken them in. Universities are necessarily conservative. 
They do not like to take risks. They like to accept established 
facts. Now our corporations are pointing the way for linking 
up theoretical instruction with practical work. That is the 
way they are attempting to get efficient service, by selecting, 
beginning at the bottom. The important thing in public serv- » 
ice is that we should not have there the young men and the I 
women who have failed in something else. The important 
thing is to have there young men and women starting into that 
service, to give their youthful enthusiasm and loyalty in the 
beginning, and develop power within it. 

At Washington the head of one of the bureaus said his 
bureau was nothing but a training school for private practice 
where two-thirds every five years go out, leaving only those 
that cannot get some opportunity on the outside. Our cor¬ 
porations have developed methods by which they go into our 
public schools, colleges and technical schools, get them to link 
up their courses of instruction with the actual requirements 
of corporate service, and give their young men and young 
women experience in the corporate service, thus drawing them 
into that service early in their lives and giving them an oppor¬ 
tunity to find out the nature of the work and the possibilities 
of their several fields of employment. 

The second phase in the solution of our problem is train¬ 
ing after admission to the service. This is actually being done 
now in many cities. Indeed, you don’t have to go out of Phila¬ 
delphia to find more than one striking illustration of this new 
development. Your fire school, for instance, is justly cele¬ 
brated far beyond the borders of Philadelphia. In some 
bureaus in the federal government voluntary training courses 
are conducted. The course which you are offering here in 
connection with the municipal court is one sign among hun- 


19 


dreds of the new idea that is developing in the improvement of 
our service. 

I had on my desk when I wrote this paper a list of forty 
or fifty courses with which I was already familiar, given in 
Chicago, Seattle, Dayton, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, where men 
in actual public service, heads of departments, judges of 
courts, are learning by practical experience the importance of 
training those who are in their service. They established their 
own schools. Now to follow out the analogy after these ex¬ 
periments have been made, we may expect universities to 
recognize them and crown them and develop them. 

The third phase of the subject is training for promotion 
in the public service, training for an efficient performance of 
duties in the service, training for promotion of the service 
with a view to opening careers. Sitting on the committee on 
which I am serving in Washington, the very able head of the 
bureau said, “We train men and women in Washington for 
every possible service under the sun in public service except 
the public service. To put it in another way, in our public 
service we are training young men and women who are study¬ 
ing law, medicine, engineering and so on, in order to get out 
of the service. The one thing we are not doing is training 
them to stay in the service and to rise in that service, and this 
thing we must do.’’ 

If this were done the graduate from the public schools 
after proper preliminary training might enter a junior position 
in the city service, receive continuous training and be pro¬ 
moted from year to year into the higher ranges with ever- 
increasing responsibilites. 

In the fourth place we must rid ourselves of no small 
amount of provincialism that besets us in dealing with the 
public service. Providence has not seen fit to distribute brains 
geographically. There is no reason why a municipality should 
insist that all of its employes should be, at the time of admis¬ 
sion to the service, residents within its borders. Everything 
being equal, a knowledge of the local situation is of immense 
value, but on many occasions it is connected with prejudices 
and shortsightedness that are positive handicaps. 

There are other aspects on the subject, but my time is 
about gone and I must speak briefly on them. That we should 


20 


develop these educational and training ideas, we must count 
upon having an ever-increasing body of loyal and faithful, 
trained, efficient and humane public employes. To that should 
be added one or two other requisites. The first is continuous 
research in the problems of government and administration, 
for if government is as important as I have endeavored to 
prove here to-day, if this service is as vast as I have portrayed 
it, if this is real to us, then surely continuous research into 
methods of improving it is as important as anything else that 
we can enact. And it is an interesting thing that the British 
Government recently appointed a commission to study meth¬ 
ods of improving the British Government, and among the 
things which that committee reported was a proposition of 
this kind, that there should be established in the cabinet, 
headed by an officer, a department of research, to which de¬ 
partment all questions should be referred by the cabinet for 
investigation and inquiry before action, in order that they 
may develop within the Government a trained body of tech¬ 
nicians, statisticians, engineers, specialists, and so on, to inquire 
into every phase of governmental work in order to put at the 
service of any public officer at any moment the best that is 
known in the world, the best literature, the best training, every¬ 
thing that could be known about that particular specialty, no 
matter how minute. We in America spend millions for re¬ 
search in connection with our great corporations. The Gen¬ 
eral Electric Company has a great plant connected with it for 
research. Years ago, when I traveled in Germany, one of the 
most striking things pointed out to me in connection with the 
chemical factory was a division of research. After we had 
been through the plant the man took me into another building 
away from the great plant itself, where they had a body of 
men at work with test tube and crucibles, and so on. The 
head of the factory said to me, “These men are not producing 
anything. They are not engaged in manufacturing anything. 
Over there is Doctor So-and-So, who is a graduate of”—and 
he named a half dozen universities, German universities and 
English, and then he said, “That man worked in the United 
States steel plant for a number of years. He knows more 
about a certain particular chemical process connected with 
steel than anybody in the world.” That may have been Ger- 


22 


would have, connected with this institution, a peripatetic divi¬ 
sion which would go around over the country and hold what 
the teachers call “institutes.” Taking health, for an example, 
the institute of health would diffuse information as to what the 
best minds on public health in America had developed in order 
that men and women who were charged with public service 
functions might have that information themselves. I see be¬ 
fore me in my mind’s eye holes in the ground, the piles of 
stone and timber and steel that will form the structure of this 
new American enterprise, trained, informed, efficient, wise, 
humane public servants capable to perform any task that civ¬ 
ilization may impose upon them. 

With our citizens awake to the significance of public serv- ) 
ice, with our civil service commissions and appointing authori¬ 
ties fully alive to their growing responsibilities, with our splen¬ 
did educational system geared up to our public requirements, 
may we not hope that America can solve that problem which 
has defied every civilization up to the modem age, namely, j 
how to combine with the widest democracy, government strong, i 
efficient, humane and wise? The Greeks searched for it and/ 
found it not; a great Greek scholar said that Greece passed 
away because her capacity to administer was not as great as her 
capacity to conquer. The Romans searched for it and built up 
great systems of law and administration, but their empire is 
a memory. What answer can this great civilization make in 
the great age that is before us? 

(Applause.) 


At the conclusion of the address by Dr. Beard, Judge 
Brown said: 

I believe that all of you have been very much profited by 
the lecture given you by Dr. Beard to-day. I am sure that it 
is an inspiration to me. I do not know to whom such a lec¬ 
ture could be given with so much benefit and profit to the 
people of this city and elsewhere, as a talk of this character to 
the people in the room here to-night. You are engaged in a 
public service, a service very close to the people, and I am glad 
to find that this great scholar has such faith in democracy. I 


21 


man boasting, but the idea is important, that that country 
thought it worth while to get the best brains it could get and 
set these men to work studying out the minutest processes, set 
them to work not only that they migh know all that Germany 
knew, but all that the other countries in the world knew. I 
do not often advise Americans to take a leaf out of a German 
book, but that is one we may take in connection with any field 
of activity. Indeed we are already taking it and developing it 
in connection with our corporation research. 

If it is important to have research in increasing the num¬ 
ber of tons of steel we produce and the number of yards of 
cloth, and the variety of goods that we produce, is it not as 
important to consider research essential to the improvement of 
this great structure of the state upon which the civilizaion de¬ 
pends ? 

Then, in addition, research is not enough. Diffusion of 
information is necessary. This I should like to see. (I might 
as well go on and dream, because, after all, the future is made 
of our dreams of to-day.) We might very well have in this 
country, either public or private, a national institution, a great 
national institution, for the public service. Perhaps there are 
some millionaires here who might endow this idea right away, 
a national institution for the public service work. We should 
have, first, analyzed and catalogued, all printed information 
about every subject related to the public service, so that at any 
moment any officer in the city, aye, the smallest town (and 
you know we need to give more attention to the small towns 
in America), in the small town of say, 2500, any officer 
could find out the best that the world had thought and had 
known about any particular problem which he is dealing with, 
could know where he could turn to and get this information. 
Then we would have a great laboratory where we would have 
all the latest labor-saving mechanical devices in application to 
the government, so that public officials in Oshkosh, Kalamazoo, 
and New York could come and try them out on their particular 
problems, try out any of these mechanical devices. Then in 
connection with it we could have an institution for training, by 
which any city could get a person trained to do any partictdar 
kind of work, or to which that city could send its present 
employes for the purpose of having them trained. Then I 


23 


have always had great faith in the people, great love for the 
people, and that is what the work in this court means—a love 
for the people, a belief in the people^s ability to govern them¬ 
selves. If the people who have positions under the form of 
government that they have established would only be re¬ 
sponsive and learn how to sympathize, how to help, how to 
benefit them, how to become better acquainted with their gov¬ 
ernment and better able to work out their salvation for the 
benefit of the people to come, it would mean an enormous step 
forward. The lecture to-day was a very inspiring one. It 
shows the necessity for this whole country to awake in a 
greater degree than it has done to the problem of instructing 
those engaged in the public service, that material benefits shall 
come to the people who have formed these governments, and 
that their children may be benefited and that there shall arise 
from those children a greater people that can serve the govern¬ 
ment when they come into its control, for the betterment of 
those that come after them. There is nothing like instruc¬ 
tion in public service. There is nothing like having the love 
that comes to you from a service given from you to others. 
The instruction that you receive in that service enlightens you 
and broadens you to a greater capacity. ‘Tt is more blessed 
to give than to receive.” That is what was meant; not cash, 
not a dollar, but something from within you to someone else 
that benefits. That is the instruction that comes to you, and 
if you have your hearts in the work, and are willing to come 
and be instructed by those who know how to tell you some¬ 
thing, you will be more able in the work that you are doinj 
both in your private agencies and in your official capacitit 
than you were before. 

I want to thank Dr. Beard in your behalf and own p. 
sonally for the honor he has conferred upon us in coming here 
and giving us this wonderfully instructive talk to-day. 

(Applause.) * 






